10 April 2012 3:56 PM

The hollow men of British politics

A poll of voters in the south London borough of Bromley, taken by the Times (£) to gauge support for Labour’s Ken Livingstone and the Conservatives’ Boris Johnson in the London Mayoral contest, is fascinating – not just for what those polled were saying about the two candidates but also about the Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron:

‘“All the time things were going quite well, Mr Cameron seemed quite impressive,” Graham said. “But as soon as they don’t, he doesn’t come across so well...When things go wrong he doesn’t seem to know what to do. He pretends he’s a man of the people but he’s not.”

‘“We need a strong leader, another Margaret Thatcher. At least she had the courage of her convictions. She’s like Boris Johnson, but in a different way. In a dress,” Gary said.‘

This chimes with the opinion expressed in the Telegraph by Don Porter, former chairman of the National Conservative Convention and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Board, who writes that the party has lost sight of its true values and disconnected itself from its grass-roots through a ‘loss of clarity, principle and policy direction’.

Such opinions will undoubtedly be causing concern to the Tory leadership -- but on past form, are unlikely to lead them to draw the right conclusion.

This is that their entire strategy of decontaminating the brand to regain power was totally misconceived. As I have been writing consistently since this strategy was first developed when the Tories under Cameron were in opposition, it was based on a fundamental misreading of why they had lost the previous three general elections, and a corresponding misreading of why Tony Blair had won them.

They thought Blair had kept winning because he had surfed the zeitgeist of lifestyle change, that he wore his emotions on his sleeve, that he was young and hip and relaxed, and that he stood for compassion and caring and a softer, kinder, gentler, more inclusive world. They thought the Tories lost because they were none of those things; that they were old and reactionary and, well, conservative; that they were seen to stand for wealth and privilege; that they seemed heartless and cruel and anally retentive and just plain weird.

The lesson of their loss of power was that Britain had changed and moved socially to the left – and so the Tories also had to move to the left. Hence the whole strategy of hugging hoodies and huskies, embracing the green agenda and gay rights and dying in the last ditch to preserve the National Health Service and overseas aid budget while screwing the armed forces and the police.

This, the Tory modernisers lectured the party, was the only way it would ever win power again. The result? It failed to win the last election which was thought to be unlosable against what was then arguably the most catastrophic and unpopular government in living memory. And so were the modernisers abashed and humbled by this failure? Not a bit of it. The reason they hadn’t won, they told each other and their sycophants in the media, was that they had not been left-wingenough.

They had thus failed to grasp two vital points. The first was that voters had not turned away from the Tories because they weren’t green or gay enough or didn’t wear blue jeans and say ‘Hey, man!’ and strum a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. Voters recoiled from the Tories because they had become a national joke and as such were clearly simply unelectable. They had proved themselves to be utterly incompetent, inept and untrustworthy. And trust -- the character issue -- is the single most important factor behind the choice a voter makes.

Second, the most important point about Blair was that, although he was indeed a latter-day Jacobin in his revolutionary goal of transforming Britain, the world and human nature itself, the pitch by which he had won power was actually to social conservatism with his pledge to make Britain safe again from young hoodlums and to repair the deep social wounds that were driving people apart and destroying the nation’s sense of community and identity.

In short, he won power by appearing to be conservative. Utterly failing to grasp this essential fact, the Conservative leadership decided instead to ditch conservatism for boiler-plate, politically-correct leftism -- which so many voters loathed, despised and feared.

The Cameroons have still not learned their lesson. They throw a few bones such as welfare and education reform to their core constituency to try to keep them on side –– while refusing to see how profoundly all the pc ideology is turning such core voters off. They refuse to see this because they just don’t care about this constituency, for whom their disdain and contempt are all too visible. What they care about instead is de-fanging the BBC in order to prevent it from attacking them; and that means propitiating the BBC’s gods at the Guardian.

Even now that the serial incompetence of the past few weeks -- over the Budget, pasties and party donor debacles -- has turned some of their erstwhile media supporters against them, they still don’t get it. Their fundamental strategic error of repositioning is still falsely reflected back at them as the ‘centre ground’ by the BBC, the Guardian and the Times (which latter paper, as a result, is now in serious danger of finding itself dangerously detached both from its proprietor, who has turned savagely on Cameron --maybe for other reasons too -- and from the general public, which is able to detect shallowness and falsity in its political leaders at a thousand paces).

This message that a reader has sent me seems to sum this up pretty well:

'It’s now time to call a halt. I think we've all put up with this nonsense quite long enough.

'We voted for change. We voted to rid our country of socialism, of compromise, of personal power and individuals’ self interest in the benefits of power. We voted to protect our hard won standards, our culture and traditions and our pride in our unique nationhood. We voted to rid ourselves of the stench of carpet-bagging Blair and Anglophobe, gravy-train riding, self-serving Brown.

'We did not vote for more of the same with a different coat. In particular we did not vote for a Lib Dem-led coalition. We did not rush to join a group of inconsequential political nonentities. We did not wish upon our impoverished , culturally endangered nation more of the same ; more creeping socialism , more invasive corrosive multicultural zealotry , more dependence on and ever closer sovereign integration with the Eurolosers , an absurd devotion to outrageous Green and overseas aid nonsense and even more of the self-serving economic illiteracy characterised by Clegg and his crew.

'We tied what remained of our severely damaged hopes wishes and aspirations to the colours of a “new revitalised” Party led by a professed Conservative, a man purporting to have presence on the world stage, a man supposedly of unwavering principle and courage, a protector of our country, our culture and our establishment. Perhaps, we foolishly thought, with this man we will get our country back.

'Wrong on every count!

'The well-worn excuse that no party won a clear majority last time will no longer wash. What we see is a party and leadership that lacks any understanding of our priorities and the will and courage to implement them. It simply lacks the spine to win on its own account, and we must suffer the indignity of seeing our vote wasted while obeisance is paid to the insignificant Clegg and his losers.

'As I said, enough. Like many, many others I am not a “captive vote”, as John Major would testify. The continued presence of the hapless Maude, Letwin and Heseltine should be a constant reminder of what ineptitude and failure look like.

'The Abstention Party is back in business.'

It’s all about character; and character means principle, consistency and courage. The Cameroons don’t seem to know what any of these even mean.

That’s why the Tories are in such trouble. The Cameroon modernisers are the hollow men, who 'like deceitful jades sink in the trial'.

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"The Cameroons have still not learned their lesson. Even now that the serial incompetence of the past few weeks - over the Budget, pasties and party donor debacles - has turned some of their erstwhile media supporters against them, they still don’t get it."

How on earth can a bunch of mostly multi-millionaire and privately educated chaps who then go on to read PPE or history at Oxbridge and have never worked in business, industry and commerce or had to supervise let alone manage groups of people in producing and providing goods and services, understand the difficulties, living standards, working conditions and stresses on their income and revenue with one lot of taxation after another. Regrettably this also applies to the Opposition who purport to represent the working man but who are also there to fill their own trunks.

As I commented earlier in response to Simon Heffer's article, the problem is the present obsession with the "middle ground".

The middle ground is a political myth to compare with man-made global warming and belief in the perfectibility of the ESSR. It is where the career politician believes that his PR will allow him to be all things to all men. He is incapable of understanding that all it does is render him indistinguishable from all the other self-serving salesmen scrambling to occupy the same territory and that it exposes him immediately as an unprincipled and manipulative phoney.

It is the lack of a coherent and honest political philosophy that leads to the endless contradictions and PR disasters. Policies, "initiatives", commitments - and all the associated U-turns have nothing to do with a coherent plan based on a consistent set of beliefs. They are little more than exercises in spin in response to the demands of whichever focus group, opinion poll, pressure group or rent-a-mob created the last set of headlines or most recently managed to attract the attention of a television camera.

The middle ground is the swamp in which trust in politics and politicians choked and died. It is the dead zone where managerialism triumphs over leadership. It is Cameron's natural habitat.

I have voted Conservative all my life. Last time, I considered voting for UKIP but feared opening the door to Labour. I also wanted to believe that Cameron was a Tory and that he might be keeping his powder dry until he had won. I have now decided that the differences between the two main parties are insignificant in the most important areas and that, in any case, I should vote according to my conscience. I won't make the same mistake again.

Cameron is a self depricating inverted snob, its a massive problem post war in this country and many of the elite schools teach this liberal lefty rubbish. i am not anti public school by any measure but we are not producing the kind of man and woman for that matter that would go of and carry out the duties of empire anymore they are too many bedwetters who cant hold there chin up

I, like your reader, am a signed up member of the NOTA party; I tick every box in any election to register my disdain against varying degrees of the same question being asked: how many freedoms, monies and liberties can we take from you today?

Until I see a politician who's principle goal in parliament is reductive, heck, I'd settle for disruptive, I will continue to do this.i can't afford not to.

When I saw Melanie Philips headline, I thought that 'Hollow' wasn't the right word and that 'Shallow' would be better, she moves to this in the article. I am afraid as each day goes by Cameron proves to be a political opportunist trying to maximise spin without any real substance or understanding of the issues involved. In the first year all could be blamed on the prievious government but as we move away from that time we see how cackhanded this his government is.

We have NHS Bill torned to shreds, with even GPs questioning whether it is workable. A budget by his friend and co-political opportunist George Osborne that at best was ham fisted at worse alienated it core voters. We had partial back tracking on the child benefit removal for higher income earners, surely the way that the original announcement was made should have warned Cameron that Osborne wasn't a safe pair of hands (after all he did know about the Russian oligarchy fiasco). So we had first age allowance gradually being abolished for those who have been prudent, we have charities hit because benefactors will be limited in tax allowed to be off-set and we have those, often the poorest in society who buy pasties facing 20% VAT, three measures that were almost covertly disclosed in the budget.

We have the anomaly, that the Chancellor has cut the top rate of tax from 50% to 45% to encourage those he believes will kick start the economy. Yet only a couple of days ago he was broadcasting that he was amazed at how little the rich paid in tax, indeed he was astonished. This seems highly surprising as there are battalions within the tax departments of accountants working on plans continually to manage and reduce taxation for the wealthiest, I know this, you know this, but somehow despite being in government for 12 months, and shadow before this, Osborne didn't, all very worrying.

If we follow the history of politicians who are around a fair time, mostly they devote themselves to the domestic scene for at least a couple of years building their knowledge and support, becoming prime ministers and understanding government. Churchill, Thatcher and Blair all did this. As they mature into the job and become less concerned about fighting for their place and develop their understanding they take on the mantle of becoming known throughout the world. It seems to me that Cameron has forgotten how three of his predecessors played there domestic roles and has headed straight to the international scene, as a PR man he has eaten crumbs at the table of the maestro in Washington, and wagged his tail like a puppy being praised for not dirtying the carpet. He is in the Far East for the glamour shots on deals that have already been signed and sealed and have nothing to do with his presence, but on the hard headed commercial reality of talent, competence and good trade terms in the UK. He tells the tale of everything he touches turning to gold, yet does not mention Sony laying off staff, or that perhaps the consequences of the Arab Spring when he went ot Egypt are perhaps not so good, nor does he mention that during that Middle East tour he went on to facilitate the selling of arms to nations we would not see as either liberal or progressive.

"because they had become a national joke and as such were clearly simply unelectable." - Woe to a country whose electoral choice is between two national jokes, especially if they are not funny but sinister for the nation's future.

In Melanie's last column we had "rebel without a clue" Trenton Oldfield (although I actually share his dislike of "shiny buildings" and the barbarity that they symbolise). Now we have a Commentator Without A Clue, USUHNAME, who thinks that winning or losing elections is just a simple matter of "selling" policies (or "narratives", whatever these might be) and refuses to acknowledge how toxic the influence of political correctness has been on mainstream political parties, dismissing well-founded suspicions about it as "laughable" and misrepresenting it as some kind of innocuous, unproblematic centre ground.

If Mr Oldfield represents incoherent social protest in the pursuit of narcissism, USUHNAME serves as an exemplar of go-with-the-flow, ask-no-questions, voice-no-objections complacency.

I have to disagree with the analysis - the strategy that Blair followed to the letter was to always win the centre-ground, and in a FPTP electoral model its a winning strategy. Thatcher did this by selling the nation a narrative (and a solution) that proved persuasive.

Blair did this by heaping on the charisma and rhetoric, and avoiding the nasty pitfalls of partisan left-right issues (in his memoir he states that one of his biggest regrets was the fox-hunting bill).

Camerons problem is that he never had a centre-ground strategy that really caught light. Perhaps the electorate is just too skeptical for "big fix" ideas now, or perhaps their big society / cuts agenda wasn't sold well enough. I'm not convinced that their lack of conservatism failed, rather their failure to successfully sell Conservatism.

I'd also add that simply deeming centric/leftwing policy as "PC" is a bit laughable as a critique.

The Tories came to the same inane conclusion about immigration. Michael Howard's ugly man behind the curtain whispering 'are you thinking what we're thinking?' slogan was a gift to Labour at the time - simply because it was utterly creepy and turned immigration instantly into a 'non-discussable issue'- and certainly not because we didn't want to have an open and honest dialogue about the effects of unintegrated mass immigration. I think we give the Tories and their adivsors far too much credit. I think they've simply been dumbed-down like so much of the British population and are no longer capable of making sound decisions. As for their stance on Europe, I think we need to start looking seriously at their actions. They have signed more EU treaties than any other party. They are now individually voting for EU integrationist legislation - far more than the Lib Dems or Labour - and yet they are branded as having a strong Eurosceptic wing which they clearly feign only to keep their now equally dumbed down supporters at bay. We can only hope that all three mainstream parties lose seats in record numbers at the next election. We need UKIP to 'do an SNP' for England, while we still have a ghost of a country left.

Galloway may be remembered as the catalyst that breaks the LibLabCon orthodoxy which as highlighted continues to race to an unacceptable amorphous set of right on dross perpetuating the culture of victimhood and increased rights. Gorgeous George has paved the way for a major shift to UKIP and other minority parties which will either lead to a seismic shift in representative politics or more likely mean that Macaroon is ousted and sanity prevails

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